Christmas Day was a dream. Waking up to sketch in bed, stumbling across an Obey Giant mural on the way to brunch at Eleven City Diner, discovering Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate at Millennium Park, and ice skating in front of the bean left us feeling more grateful than ever for each other and the ability to travel together.

On our second day in Chicago we went to Intelligentsia in the Monadnock Building before taking the bus to the Shedd Aquarium. Alex was a marine bio major so fishes are on the top of his list. We got to see a really neat show at the aquarium with trained dolphins and beluga whales. They even had live Christmas music for the holiday season!

Our first day in Chicago we spent the entire day at the Art Institute of Chicago since our flight got in so early. It’s always fun to see what Alex is interested in looking at versus what my eye is drawn to first. We were fortunate to see an exhibit of Indian art that doesn’t travel very often. Even though we spent the whole day at the museum, it still wasn’t really enough time to see everything. We skipped a lot of the Asian and African art and rushed through the modern art at the end.

It was so foggy when we arrived in Chicago! We didn't realize just how foggy it was until we stepped off the subway in Printer's Row. The first thing we did in Chicago after dropping off our bags at the Hotel Blake was check out Hero Coffee Bar. I found it on Yelp but it ended up being at the end of our hotel block. You guys, I really love lattes and bagels and this place was banging. It made me miss Charleston so much.